The bill passed on the 2024 session's last day, a measure that shape-shifted out of legislation completely unrelated.
The new state law is known as Addy’s Law, named to honor 8-year-old Adalynn Pierce, a girl who was hit by a car and killed in McDonough while crossing the road to get on her school bus on the morning of Feb. 1. Lawmakers quadrupled the minimum traffic fine to deter motorists from illegally passing school buses that are about to board or discharge school children.
Republican Rep. Don Parsons (R-Marietta) was among 78 lawmakers who voted against the bill on the last night of the legislative session. 93 voted in favor. It takes 91 "yes" votes to pass a bill in the House.
Days earlier, lawmakers had rewritten House Bill 409 – originally a very wonky bill about public debt. After several re-writes, it became the school bus bill.
"The hour is late. This bill is not what it originally was," said the bill’s original sponsor, Rep. Lauren Daniel (R-Locust Grove), who welcomed the rewrite and convinced lawmakers that a minimum thousand-dollar fine for school bus violations would save children's lives.
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She also told them that fine-wise, it put Georgia in the middle of the 50 states.
"The state of Indiana has it set at $10,000. And so this was the lower cost," Daniels said as she presented the bill two hours prior to adjournment for the year.
While Indiana has a maximum fine of $10,000, 11Alive learned there’s no state standard for minimum fines. Judges set fines at their discretion. An Indiana judge told us a $1 fine is possible, though highly unlikely the minimum fine under Indiana law.
We found most states had minimum fines below $400. Georgia’s will be $1,000.
"A lot of people are going to be very unhappy with this legislation," Parsons told lawmakers moments before the vote.
"I reject that premise a little bit," Daniels responded, in part.
Many lawmakers were hearing about this issue for the first time – sympathetic to the schoolchildren who board buses but questioning if a minimum thousand-dollar fine is too much.
"A thousand-dollar fine can prevent someone from paying their rent, making their house payment, putting food on the table," Parsons said Friday, more than a month after the bill passed.
An impatient House Speaker hurried the debate to try to beat a midnight deadline as lawmakers began to weigh the size of the proposed fine. Earlier that day, the senate passed the rewritten bill with only three dissenting votes and no debate.
"A thousand dollars is obviously a fine that is going to make people upset. It is much cheaper than having to pay for a child’s funeral," Daniel told lawmakers in response to criticism of the bill.
The House passed the bill with a scant three-vote margin and sent it to the governor. Parsons, a 30-year legislator, views it as a flawed yet accepted process.
"Be very careful about what that bill says. Read it carefully, and know what it does," Parsons said of legislation materializing late in the session.
Though Addy's Law passed the legislature in some haste, Gov. Kemp’s office had weeks to vet it before he signed it into law last week.